


New and Old

by TonicHoliday



Category: Original Work
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Friendship, Gen, Technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 20:11:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19216669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TonicHoliday/pseuds/TonicHoliday
Summary: Isaac is relocated to Jade Valley, a technology-free town nestled in the countryside that claims to break the tech tether. There are no screens there, no holograms, nothing using artificial intelligence... Apart from a delivery drone that no one else seems to notice, that no one else but Isaac would want to talk to.





	New and Old

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bright_Elen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/gifts).



Isaac was eight and a half when a pop-up changed his life.

Ironically, a company encouraging potential customers to buy into their technology-free life used this medium to advertise. Getting noticed was tricky in a world crammed with ads. This one was no different to the usual holo-ads leaping from smart devices, asking him if he’d like to try another bread brand for his morning toast, floating above the vacuum robot passing his feet. The only difference was this ad wasn’t immediately swept away by his mother’s hand.

Following a family discussion, they relocated to Jade Valley, an eco-friendly town in the middle of the countryside supplied with only the most basic technologies. Jade Valley residents valued the simple life, the kind lived in the mid-twentieth century. They cut all screens, artificial intelligences and holograms from the diet of distraction the rest of the population gorged upon. Jade Valley, as their slogan said, broke the tech tether.

At first, Isaac was preoccupied with making friends at his new school to care much about the effects of a life bereft of technology. His parents spent more time with him in the evenings, always pointing out how pleasant it was to have a home-cooked meal or go for a walk in the untouched woodlands instead of waiting for the Nutri-bot to arrive or wasting the evening deciding which VR location to visit. It took a month for them to long for the life they had before. Jade Valley’s support groups called it homesickness, missing something that both helped and hindered life’s natural flow. The adults suffered from it the most. They were just too stubborn to admit it.

***

One school year into his Jade Valley residency and Isaac hadn’t made any friends. As it turned out, learning without technological aids was an isolating experience.

In his old life, he’d visited his friends’ avatars in virtual worlds and worked through homework challenges as a team. Augmented reality brought class concepts he couldn’t quite grasp to life. He could raise his hand in private if he got stuck; an IM from the teacher left his peers none the wiser. AI assistants were the ones teased for their lack of social graces, and no adults minded that.

All it took was Isaac falling behind in history for the other kids to draw a target on his back. Isaac the new kid became Isaac the idiot. Scared to raise his hand, to speak up and say he didn’t know a long word in his textbook he would’ve silently looked up before, he lost interest. He took to staring through the window instead, watching colourful birds skim the tops of trees lining the playground, waiting for the bell to ring. Until he noticed that one of those colourful birds wasn’t a bird. It was a drone.

Isaac kept a note in his desk tracking the times the drone travelled over the trees: always in the morning, either 9.50AM or 11.30AM, flying in the same direction, taking the same route, and always the same model painted a sky-blue camouflage.

The first Saturday he dedicated to catching the drone, he stood outside the empty playground’s perimeter among trees fringing the edge of the woodlands.

Nothing passed overhead at 9.50AM, so he spent the remaining time eating his packed lunch on a moss-covered rock, birds plucking insects from the surrounding undergrowth and flocking towards his discarded crusts. At 11.30AM, the drone’s gentle hum interrupted the wildlife. Isaac followed it, sprinting between tree trunks, trying to catch a glimpse of it passing high above the canopy of branches and leaves, when his foot caught in a tangle of roots and he fell flat on his face.

He cursed at his grazed hands. A First-Aid Bot wouldn’t be on its way to heal his smarting flesh; there were no FABS stationed anywhere in Jade Valley. No helper bots at all. The only tech he’d seen since his arrival was the drone, the kind of basic machine so prevalent in his old life he’d barely noticed their existence.

Why was it permitted to be pass over Jade Valley? He had to know.

***

He’d never climbed a tree in his life. It was with a great sense of satisfaction that he reached the top of this one, back against the trunk as he snapped away thinning branches to create a perfect natural window to the sky.

Delivery drones only broke their schedules if they suspected a human was in danger. Isaac positioned himself at 9.45AM, upside down, grasping larger branches, wedging his ankle above his head like he was stuck. Hearing the drone approach, he called out for help and tried not to smile when its blue and white chassis appeared above, halting its journey.

“Do you require assistance?” The drone’s rotas fluttered while it spoke, smoothing the metallic timbre of its voice.

“I wanna talk to you.”

“I am not designed for conversation,” it replied immediately. It didn’t move away.

“How come?”

“My primary function is the delivery of independence, mobility and care equipment. So you wish to place an order?”

Voice strained by the uncomfortable position, blood running into his head, Isaac asked where the drone was headed. A cross appeared on the small translucent screen on its front.

Flatly, it said, “My destination is confidential.”

“What’re you carrying then?”

Another cross. “My cargo is confidential.”

Gripping the tree’s coarse bark and freeing his foot, Isaac realised the drone might fly away any moment if he didn’t keep talking to it.

“If I follow you, I’ll know where you’re going.”

The drone hovered, a line of pixels blinking on its screen like a green cursor. There was no question to respond to. After a moment of one-sided awkwardness, the drone asked again, “Do you wish to place an order?”

“Don’t I need, like, credits or something?”

“Not if you wish to start a free trial.”

“Yes! How do I do that?”

“What is your unique identification number?”

“I… don’t remember.”

A shimmering beam emitted from the drone’s slender frame and scanned Isaac’s face. “You have no facial imprint in the population database.” Probably because his parents erased their digital imprints when they moved to the valley.

“So I can’t have the trial?”

“I can assign you a temporary number.” A circle throbbed briefly on the drone’s screen. “You are ID-554. Should I assign your current map reference as ‘home’?”

“Uh, I guess.”

“Do you wish to place an order for delivery to ‘home’?”

“What kinda stuff you deliver?”

“My catalogue includes mobility supports, medical supplies, food and drink, therapeutic aids, personal care items—”

“Food. Food’s good.”

“A selection of 1,500 food items are available as part of the trial service. Do you wish to hear the root categories?”

“Sure.” He had nothing better to do.

“Meal pods and powders, vacuum-dried fruits, vitamin supplements and drinks, appetite suppressants—”

“Drinks,” Isaac interrupted.

“There are twelve sub-categories in vitamin drinks. Do you wish to hear them?”

“Um, nah. Gimme the most popular one.”

“A sample carton of VITplan strawberry protein milkshake.”

“Yeah. That’ll do.”

“Due to my current routine, I can deliver these at 11.30AM on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends or at 9.50AM on Wednesdays and Fridays. Is that acceptable?”

“Sure. The 11.30 one’s good. I’ll be here next Saturday.”

“Order confirmed.” Almost like it had nodded, the drone’s forward chassis dropped a few centimetres. Then it took off.

“Hey!” Issac called, standing on his tiptoes on his supporting branch.

The drone was already out of sight.

***

“You know,” Isaac said, reaching into the drone’s lower compartment the following Saturday, “you should really say goodbye before you fly away.” The compartment closed and locked the moment Isaac withdrew the small pink carton. “A hello would be nice too.” The drone had made an ugly electronic imitation of a doorbell when it stopped in front of his familiar branch. “It’s nice to say someone’s name too. My name’s Isaac. What’s yours?”

“I have no name. My primary function is the delivery of independence, mobility and care—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But you must have a name.”

“I have a model code and serial number.”

“I’ll give you a name. How about… Drew? Drew the done!”

The drone’s screen was blank. It didn’t appear to have any opinion on Isaac’s clever name.

Balanced against the central trunk, Isaac popped the straw into his milkshake and took a sip. “So, Drew, how come you’re allowed to fly over Jade Valley? It’s supposed to be a no-tech zone, right?”

“My flight path is authorised. I may traverse this airspace on the condition that I remain hidden from those on land.”

Swallowing the overly sweet drink, Isaac said, “But you speak to me?”

“You are not on land.” Drew’s screen tilted like it was taking him in from head to toe. “You are in a tree.”

Isaac laughed. “Yeah.”

“Do you wish to order delivery two of four of your free trial?”

“Sure. Gimme the same again,” Isaac said as he raised the half-empty carton.

“Order confirmed. Goodbye.”

Isaac dropped the carton as he tried fruitlessly to grab one of the drone’s landing feet to stop it from flying away. It was no use. Transaction complete, the drone saw no reason to continue the conversation.

This time Isaac had binoculars—his father had taken to bird watching and bought him a pair, and that’s exactly what he’d told his parents he was doing when he left the house. He studied Drew’s path for a few minutes. Owing to its speed and camouflage, it was hard to keep up with it, but he saw it heading for the mountains west of the valley.

Drew drifted, gaining altitude. Isaac lost it and cursed under his breath.

***

Drew said hello when it arrived for Isaac’s second scheduled delivery.

“ID-554,” it said, almost curiously, as Isaac reached into its compartment.

“Isaac,” Isaac reminded.

“Isaac. Saying hello to customers has had a positive effect on my deliveries.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Yesterday a customer asked me: how are you?”

“What’d you say?”

“I assumed they meant how is it that I exist. Is that incorrect?”

“Yep.” Sucking at his milkshake, which he didn’t even really like that much, Isaac explained. “They meant how’re you feeling, or how’s your day been. You’re not supposed to answer seriously.”

“How am I supposed to answer?”

“You just say that you’re fine, but you need to ask them how they are too. It’s polite, like when people talk about the weather because they don’t have anything else to say.”

“The weather informs my flight path.”

Isaac nodded. He didn’t want to talk about the weather. “Are you connected to the internet?”

“Yes.”

“Reckon you could look something up for me?”

“I only have access to my delivery network.”

“Are you sure?”

Three blue dots blinked across Drew’s screen while it checked. Isaac waited, squeezing the empty carton in his hand then folding it in half. The dots continued blinking, so Isaac unfolded the carton and took to reading the ingredients.

When a worrying amount of time had passed, Isaac waved a hand across Drew’s screen. “Hey. Drew. You still in there?”

Drew elevated a foot in the air like it’d been caught in a gust of wind, rotas spinning loudly as it settled again. “I am sorry, Isaac. What would you like to know?”

“I had a pet before I moved here. A cat. I had to give her up when we moved ‘cause she’s a syntho. Can you look her up on the database and see if she’s okay? Her registry was SFP-28-46-59.” He may have forgotten his own ID number, but he’d never forget hers.

“Yes. One moment please.”

Isaac smiled, trying not to get his hopes up. His parents had said they could get a real cat once they moved to Jade Valley. There was no danger of pollution here, no issues with living space. Isaac didn’t want a real cat; he’d grown up with little Poppy and loved her the way she was, bolts and all.

“SFP-28-46-59,” Drew said. An image of Poppy appeared on its screen. “Her classification is: animate, homed, no hardware or software issues.”

“Thanks,” Isaac said, staring at the image of Poppy’s face before it dissolved from Drew’s screen.

“Do you wish to order delivery three of four of your free trial?”

Isaac nodded. “Sure.”

***

Isaac found he didn’t want to use Drew for its web searching capabilities after that. He could’ve cheated on his homework, sent messages to old school friends, but when it came down to it, all he wanted was something to talk to. A friend.

On the third weekend, he told Drew about his classes, his teachers, even the bully who’d broken his pencils and written a swear word on his pencil case in permanent marker. He hadn’t told his parents about that. When his mum noticed the case was missing, he’d told her he’d lost it. Drew didn’t have anything like pencil cases in its system and had apologised.

He’d only taught Drew a few things about manners, but it was remarkably polite now. It held a conversation, made jokes, discussed things it had discovered online. Drew’s favourite topic was things it saw on its travels over Jade Valley. Sometimes, it went as far as showing him a bird’s eye view of the scene on its screen. Apparently, Drew was a gossip. The only thing it wouldn’t discuss was its destination or what else it carried in its compartment beside Isaac’s milkshakes.

The next milkshake was chocolate, and Isaac liked that flavour better. The discovery was bittersweet, however, for it was item four of four. He could no longer participate in the free trial without having credits assigned to his account.

Drew promised that, despite having nothing to deliver, it’d stop and say hello to Isaac every Saturday. It would be impolite to ignore a friend.

***

Drew’s rotas announced its presence, moving the nearby leaves as it approached. Right on time as always.

“Good morning, Isaac. How are you today?”

“Sad.”

“I am sorry to hear that. Why are you sad?”

“My parents are fighting. My mum says my dad spends too much time gardening and not enough time with her. My dad says my mum spends too much time reading and visiting her friends.”

“That appears to be an easy difficulty to solve.”

“That’s what I said! But they won’t listen to me.”

“I have something that may cheer you up,” Drew said, a noticeable warmth filtering through its mechanical voice.

The front compartment of Drew’s storage space opened with a whirr. Inside, a carton of chocolate milkshake was pushed to the front by the internal separators.

“The benefactor of this item wishes to remain anonymous,” Drew said.

It had to be Drew. Who else would it be?

“Thanks,” Isaac said, reaching inside. It had been a while since he’d had one of the sickly-sweet drinks.

Drew was right, though. It had cheered him up.

***

Isaac began to understand the meaning behind ‘living for the weekends.’ School was more bearable when he knew he’d get to hang around in the woods on Saturday morning and chat to Drew.

Drew continued bringing the milkshakes, always claiming they were from an anonymous benefactor. It was only recently that Isaac had started giving that not-so-anonymous person something in return. It didn’t seem fair otherwise.

He made Drew things. Some he made in art classes, like clay dishes painted in exotic colours. Others he made at home in his room or in the tree while waiting for Drew to arrive. It was never anything special, but Drew said the anonymous benefactor appreciated them regardless.

Drew often shared pictures of Jade Valley’s townsfolk from high above, interesting animals it passed on its journeys, even the charging unit at the warehouse it returned to every day. It was quite the photographer. Isaac liked to see the images. Their few minutes of initial interaction had grown into almost half an hour every Saturday morning. Drew arrived earlier so as not to delay its next delivery somewhere in the mountains. He still wouldn’t say what was up there.

***

“Isaac. Your anonymous benefactor has requested to speak with you. Is that acceptable?”

“What?” Isaac almost lost his footing on the familiar branches that had supported him for months, almost dropped his milkshake. “I thought it was you?”

“I apologise for the confusion and breach of privacy. Do you wish to speak to them?”

“Yeah!” Isaac said immediately, struck with an equal mixture of anxiety and excitement. “Where are they?”

“One moment.” The blinking dots appeared on Drew’s screen.

When they disappeared, a face flashed up on the screen. An elderly woman. She blinked, then smiled. Isaac hadn’t seen anyone like her in a long, long time.

“Well, hello young man.” She raised her hand and waved the tips of her bony fingers at the camera. Her voice was croaky and timid, boosted by Drew’s small speakers. “So, you’re the one who’s been teaching the drone how to behave like a gentleman.”

Isaac simple stared at her, mouth agape.

“I appreciate the gifts you’ve sent.”

“We all do,” came a voice from behind her. Male. Equally old and gravelly.

The woman waved a hand over her shoulder. “Do you know anything about me?”

Isaac shook his head. Few people in Jade Valley or his old city knew much about society’s elderly. Big cities were dangerous for elders, so almost all of them stayed indoors or relocated to units designed for their care. Their every need was met by robots. Everything was delivered. All interaction and entertainment was virtual. Once you got old, you were expected to retreat into that isolated life. People accepted it. Isaac hadn’t given it much thought.

“I live at Fort View elders’ home. There’s twenty of us up here. Drew’s been delivering our meal powders for a number of years, though he’s only recently started speaking to us, and only recently started calling himself Drew! He’s quite the chatterbox, isn’t he? When we asked him where he learnt to be so chatty, he told us he had a friend. He wouldn’t answer any questions about you, so we went down the gift service route. He couldn’t get out of it if it involved deliveries.”

“It was my idea,” the same male voice said somewhere offscreen.

“Yes, yes,” the woman said, waving her hand again. “We weren’t expecting you to be so young. But we were wondering if…” Her head tipped to one side. “Are you in a tree?”

“Yeah,” Isaac said, embarrassed, though unsure why. Perhaps it was his obvious initial shock at the woman’s wrinkled face. Now he’d gotten used to it, he barely noticed the difference. What he had noticed was the kind look in her eyes, the playful way she moved her thin hands when she spoke.

“You be careful!” she said, pointing at him through the screen.

The man who’d been calling out came and stood behind her, ducking to look into the camera. Other than a few white hairs standing tall on the top of his head, he was entirely bald.

“You all right, fella?” he asked, waving. “What’s your name?”

“Isaac.”

“Well, Isaac,” the woman said, leading the call again, “I’m Alice and this is Harry. We were wondering if you’d like to come and visit us all at Fort View. We haven’t had a human visitor in…” Her eyes glazed while mentally searching, then she whistled. “…a long time. We’ve lots of games, a nice garden—”

“With a petting zoo!” Harry added.

“Yes,” Alice said. “And many more of those milkshakes you like.”

Isaac smiled. “I don’t like them that much to be honest, but yeah, I wanna visit.”

Alice nodded excitedly and Harry punched the air.

“Perfect. When would you like to come?”

“Now. Can I bring Drew?”

“Certainly. He’ll show you the way. Will your parents be okay with you visiting?”

“Yeah, they think I’m bird watching anyway.”

“It’s settled then. See you soon, Isaac.”

After that, Isaac went ‘bird watching’ every Saturday morning. Instead of sitting in a tree and waiting for Drew, they walked through the woodlands side by side, chatting all the way to the auto cable car that delivered rare visitors to Fort View.

Isaac had been desperate for a friend, and he’d found twenty-one.


End file.
